Setting up global .gitignore file

The problem

There's a problem with how people use .gitignore files. Many add their .idea, .vscode and such folders correlated to their environment of choice. While it's not such a bad thing in small private projects, it's definetely not good in larger codebases. It gets progressively harder to mantain.

But there's a solution! All the personal ignored files and folders can be stored in a global .gitignore file for all projects. It effectively makes project's .gitignore file contain only project-specific ignores.

Setup global .gitignore

First check if global .gitignore already exists in your system.

$ git config --get core.excludesfile

Typically it should be in these locations:

Linux: ~/.config/git/ignore

Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.config\git\ignore

If it doesn't exist you may need to create it and tell git about it's location:

$ git config --global core.excludesfile <PATH>